President Donald Trump’s targeting of journalists is once again raising alarm bells. Trump has spent much of his second term lashing out at female journalists who ask him difficult questions that he seemingly does not want to answer.
He is, of course, also known for dismissing negative reports as “fake.” And you might remember how, back in June, he stormed out of a Meet the Press interview with Kristen Welker.
Well, now, he’s threatening to report her to the Federal Communications Commission “for rebuke or punishment.”
Before Trump made this threat, Welker said Trump has had “some mixed results” when it comes to candidates he’s endorsed.
Some Republican candidates that he has backed have won their elections, while others have lost. “He, of course, has endorsed a slate of candidates in the primaries,” Welker said on NBC affiliate WRC-TV. “He’s had some mixed results, but most recently, his pick of Senator Darline Graham, of course, the sister of the late Senator Lindsey Graham, was successful in her primary battle, so now she takes on Dr. Annie Andrews in South Carolina.”
Apparently, Trump took this very personally.
After Welker made this comment, Trump took to Truth Social to lash out at her and threaten her. He made it very clear that he was specifically reacting to this comment, as he actually mentioned the “mixed results” piece in his post. Perhaps he thought it implied that his endorsement is not inherently valuable, and proceeded to act as if she had said something super horrible.
Regardless, though, he actually threatened her before responding defensively to the comments she made.
As he often does, he started by attacking her character. He called her “unpopular” and said that Meet the Press should be called “Meet the Fake Press” instead.
“Kristen Welker, the Unpopular ‘Hostess’ of the once great Meet the Press, now considered Meet the Fake Press, just stated that Donald Trump has ‘mixed results’ on his Endorsements of Candidates, when the recent WINS of Darline Graham and Mike Mazzei, stand at 100% for the U.S. Senate, and 98% for the U.S. House, recently and over the longterm,” Trump wrote.
Did someone else write the post for him or was he referring to himself in the third person? It remains unclear.
He then threatened to report her.
In the lengthy post, Trump acted as if journalists should not be able to say things like this. “How can anyone be allowed to say this, working for freely given Public Airwaves?” he continued. “…Because of this purposeful inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment.”
Trump went on to assert that his endorsement is actually “the strongest Endorsement in the History of Politics.” For some reason, he even added that “if it were not, I would be the first to admit it,” even though his critics aren’t buying that. After all, he recently shared a graphic that ranked him as “the greatest” president in U.S. history above all other previous presidents.
In his post, he tried to claim that the “Radical Left News” is trying to make his endorsement sound less powerful than it really is. “Unfortunately, she is not the only one,” Trump said of Welker. “The Radical Left News is going out of their way to harass, demean, and libel anything ‘TRUMP.'”
He continued, “Their new weapon is to say that my 99% SUCCESS Rate on Endorsements, 100% on Senatorial Endorsements (Many of whom were not even given a shot of winning until I Endorsed!), is either a mixed result, or not very good. In actuality, it is, without question, the strongest Endorsement in the History of Politics. If it were not, I would be the first to admit it.”
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